Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

by Jonathan Kennedy

The Arab armies’ expansion played an important role in forging the modern world well beyond the areas they conquered. Since the days of the pax Romana, the Mediterranean had been the main route along which people, goods, ideas and germs flowed from the much more advanced east to northwestern Europe. With the devastation of the Eastern Roman Empire, this artery was severed. The renowned Belgian historian Henri Pirenne famously argued that without Muhammad, Charlemagne would be inconceivable.[73] The political vacuum in northwestern Europe ultimately led to the emergence of a new order that was dominated by a patchwork of small kingdoms, feudal lords and thriving city-states but was at the same time unified by its Christian identity, in opposition to its Muslim neighbors to the south and east.